


Blaze of Glory

by ivorygates



Series: Tiger'verse [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3348989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes people ask her (in the casual way of friends and coworkers) if she had anyone in the Program.  She always says no.  Sometimes she wishes it were true, because if it was, she wouldn't ache so hard for her husband, wouldn't wish he'd come back (she knows he isn't dead; the military wouldn't've come for her if he was), wouldn't think about the one thing she (everyone) wants to ask (him, everyone who knew).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blaze of Glory

**Author's Note:**

> Last time I did a Timestamp Meme, Lacey asked for "The Widow's Walk, Six Months Later". So here it is...

They called the day her world ended the Spring Surprise. It sounds like a name for a prom or a state fair. Something happy. Something _nice_. Not fires and death and monsters in spaceships coming to kill them all. (She wasn't as surprised as everyone else in the world, because Cameron had been doing something top secret for years, and he'd never talked about it but somehow secrets just get around in a marriage.)

When the attack started she'd tried to call the base, but the phone lines were down. It took her two days more to get a call through to Daddy, and he told her to stay away, said there'd been trouble in town, said the Mitchells had been burned out. He didn't have to tell her why. By then the riots had started, and Daddy Campbell hadn't raised up any stupid children. All Annabelle wanted to do was take the kids and go home, but home wasn't there any more. (They said Earth had survived, but she knew better: this wasn't the world she'd been born into.)

Millions were dead and thousands had no ID. It was easy enough to become someone else. SG and Ray-Ray were young enough not to care much when their last name changed from "Mitchell" to "Campbell" (Ray-Ray asked if she and Daddy had gotten a divorce; SG just asked when he was coming home.) She'd gotten all the way to Oklahoma before her car died and the government really locked down the checkpoints. She's wished ever since she could've made it all the way home, because six months after she settled in Chocktaw, the United States Army showed up and told her she had to bring SG and Ray-Ray and come live in Colorado Military Administration Zone Number One.

The MilZones are safe places. The rationing isn't as bad as it is everywhere else (you can almost always get at least powdered milk), and there's electric 24/7. Good schools, _great_ security, and there are real hospitals, too. The MilZone is divided up into six concentric security zones. She's in the outermost one: Cordon Six. Cordon Six is almost normal.

Living in one of the MilZones is a privilege (so everyone says). She knows she's made a devil's bargain, but she had no choice (due process died when the world did). _It's for the kids,_ she tells herself (even if death would be better, she knows she can't choose it).

Sometimes people ask her (in the casual way of friends and coworkers) if she had anyone in the Program. She always says no. Sometimes she wishes it were true, because if it was, she wouldn't ache so hard for her husband, wouldn't wish he'd come back (she knows he isn't dead; the military wouldn't've come for her if he was), wouldn't think about the one thing she (everyone) wants to ask (him, everyone who knew).

_How could you do that? How could you drag the entire human race into a war we couldn't win?_

Three years later the SFs come for her during Second Period (she's teaching the Times Tables to a classroom full of eight year olds: History and Geography and Biology all changed that March, but Arithmetic's eternal). She knows there's no point in arguing (MilZone is short for "Military Administration Zone"; the whole area is under martial law) but she isn't expecting to be taken through Cordon One and all the way up to The Mountain.

(Most of the houses are burnt out in Cordon One, and there are checkpoints with APCs every half mile.)

Six SFs go with her into the Mountain itself. (She wants to ask if they're taking her to her husband. She isn't sure she wants to know.) She realizes quickly enough they aren't here to guard her, but to protect her. There are people in the corridors in uniform, but they don't behave like any military she knows.

They go down and down and down and she thinks of labyrinths and minotaurs and a book she read once that had a haunted maze in it and then she's in a room full of monitors and blinking lights and a wall of glass overlooking a room she's seen a thousand times (there was a documentary filmed here a few months before the Spring Surprise). The Embarkation Room. The Stargate. She can see blue light seeping through the shield that covers the center, and wonders if it's breaking. The interlocking plates look like knives. She hears shouting (has heard it since the armored door opened).

"Dani! For god's sake -- what if you're wrong?"

"Then we all go out in a blaze of glory. You know you'd like that, Jack. Don't lie to me."

There are three technicians in the room (seeing guns shouldn't look odd to her after three years in a MilZone, but it still does) and a General.

"Look -- at least let me send you a tech team. I can have McKay--"

He breaks off and turns toward her when the SFs bring her inside. (She hears laughter from whoever he's talking to over the microphone.) She recognizes him from the documentary. It's General O'Neill, and when he looks at her, Annabelle thinks about running -- she knows she couldn't get out of the base, but every instinct tells her something terrible will happen if she stays.

He shuts off the mike. "Mrs. Mitchell. Thank you for coming. How're the kids?" he asks, and when he smiles, it's a death's head grin.

"What do you want?" she asks. "Where's Cam?" She wants to ask more questions. Fear is a cold lump in her throat: he's brought her here to do something, something about Cam, and what if she can't and _what about her children?_ but there isn't time.

"Oh, I think we'd all like to know that right now, Mrs. Mitchell," General O'Neill says. "Why don't you ask him?"

He turns back to the mike and switches it on again. She hears a gabble of voices. Laughter.

"--hung up on us, honey--"

It's Cam. He sounds happy and that seems so wrong. In all the times she's thought about him, she's never thought of him being happy.

"Someone here to talk to you, Mitchell," General O'Neill says. He steps over to her and ushers her toward the mike with a hand under her elbow (a real gentleman, and Annabelle Sophia Campbell Mitchell would like to believe a world of ladies and gentlemen still exists), and then she's sitting down in the chair. The microphone hanging in front of her face looks like a snake about to strike.

General O'Neill gestures at the microphone. "Cam?" she says. Her voice is high and scared, but she can't make it come out any other way. "Cam, honey? It's Belle."

"What's she doing there?" Cam snarls, and his voice has gone low and ugly. "What are you doing to her, you sonovabitch?"

"Horsetrading," O'Neill says, and his smile is ugly.

"Cam?" she cries. "Cam, what's going on? Where are you? Cam -- _Cameron!_ "

"Belle." His voice is harsh and ragged. "Baby, you gotta get out of there."

"You need to come home to make that happen," O'Neill says.

"The kids?" Cam asks.

"They're-- They're all right--" She wants to say more, to say all the words she rehearsed in all those nights alone, but tears are choking her to silence.

"They're here," O'Neill says. (Belle thinks he should look afraid, or angry, or happy, but he doesn't look anything at all.) "Bring your team home, Colonel Mitchell. You can see them again."

Scuffling and static and garbled cross-talk, then: "Aw, c'mon, Jack, you know he won't do that. Hey, you know, if I were you, I'd be hanging up the phone right now and trying to get a team to Dakara."

"Is that where you are? Dani?"

"You'll never find it in time."

"There are millions of innocent people out there!" O'Neill says, and there's emotion in his voice now. "Not just the Lucians -- _Dani!_ "

"No one's innocent," the woman answers. "You know that, Jack."

Belle scrubs at her face with her hands. "Cam?" she says. "Cam, what are you doing? Are you all right? Please, baby, please. Just come home."

"I can't do that, Belle," he says, and now he just sounds tired. "I swore an oath. I--"

"Sam's ready." The woman -- Dani? -- interrupts. "Goodbye, Jack."

"Dani! _Mitchell!_ "

The General is shouting names she doesn't know as the monitors go dark. When the shield over the Stargate retracts there's nothing there but empty air. General O'Neill turns and walks out of the Control Room, and a few seconds later the SFs escort her out too. She spends an hour locked in a small room alone before they come back and take her home.

She doesn't ask any questions. There's no one to ask.

#

Two weeks later there's a Special Presidential announcement. President Kinsey says they've won the war, the enemy's been defeated, thanks to SG-1. He talks about something called the Dakara Weapon, and there are photos of Cam and three other people she remembers from the documentary: Dr. Jackson and Major Carter and an alien known only as Teal'c. President Kinsey says they died as heroes, and their valiant sacrifice has delivered Earth from the threat of alien dominion forever.

He calls for a national day of prayer and thanksgiving.

Annabelle isn't sure what to be thankful for.

She never sees General O'Neill again.

#


End file.
